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Let's Play: Spirit Blade - Parts 31, 32, & 33








Notes: I don't understand why the developer thought it was a good idea to pad this game out with an additional seven boss battles between fighting Zadair in his first form and his final two forms.

I also don't understand why the developer decided to design the final boss in the when he did. With the way the final boss is currently designed it can regularly and easily throw the player over the $#%@ barrel whenever it wants.

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Darn, I was hoping you'd beaten the boss and I could copy your strat.

One of the comments on the page implies there's even a FOURTH stage which is I don't even...
Funnily enough, shortly after posting this, I discovered how to beat the boss. In case you actually want to come back to this, I included my strategy inside the tag.


Like you, I used Moxia, Terra, Miti, and Aja for stage 1. I had the advantage that I'd leveled every character up to 50 though. Fortunately, aside from Moxia the only character of these you'll need to use after Stage 1 is Aja.

For stage 1, I'd have Aja debuff the demon and Terra buff the party with a defensive boost in order to keep damage levels low. Aja could help with healing if need be (two actions per round thanks to her sword, plus a whole lot of 5,000 healing potions).

A bit slow this way because the demon's not doing enough damage to raise SP points quickly, but it's less risky, and I can melee attack and guard to raise SP some. I tried to end Stage 1 with Aja at full SP, though this isn't really that important, as it's not her SP abilities that are crucial to stage 3.

I didn't worry about whether Moxia would have full SP because she'd gain those quickly enough in stage 2.

Stage 2 ring loadout: Omni for Moxia, Stat for everyone else.

As soon as the stage would start, I'd immediately have Goldi use Omni Raise to fully buff the party (and then have Moxia, Spirette, and Halla use the status block items to make the party immune to status ailments.)

Moxia will get her buffs wiped off fairly quickly (I kind of wish I had 4 stat rings) but the other 3 characters (who are all much squishier than Moxia) are immune to debuffs and so will retain the defensive buffs.

With full physical and magic buffs on the party aside from Moxia, a Recover spell from Goldi and a Recover II spell from Halla can pretty much heal the party completely even after a full series of attacks from the boss. He'll still knock the party down pretty close to death, VERY close to death sometimes, but as long as the Double Physical Defense buffs and Double Magical Defense buffs remain on he shouldn't kill anyone, and with the Double Agility Buffs the healers will go before him.

Fortunately, since he'll be doing so much damage, Goldi will be gaining SP points like mad, and will reach 100 SP before Omni Raise wears off. This is important because if the buffs fall off the party dies very, very quickly.

With Goldi/Halla healing, it was up to Spirette and Moxia to do the damage. Fortunately, Ice works okay on the boss, so Spirette's ice magic and Ice nuke does good damage, and Moxia can hit him with her magic sword attack while charging up her spirit blade attack.

I actually used Spirette's health point check to monitor the boss, and made sure to have both Moxia/Goldi/Halla full on SP when he died. You can guard/heal if he's close to dying and some of the characters are low on SP.

I nearly screwed up at the end and forgot to monitor the status ailment protection, and it dropped off, but fortunately the boss only had a few thousand hitpoints left at this point and I killed him.

For stage 3, I used Moxia, Goldi, Halla, and Aja. Aja is the key, I do not know if it is even possible to beat this stage without her (and without her Flash Katana that lets her act twice in a round.)

I changed the ring loadout a bit: Omni for Aja, and Stat for everyone else. I did this because I was tired of having Moxia's attack buffs stripped off her right when I wanted to do a Spirit Blade. However, your Aja is lower level than mine and thus weaker, so you may want to keep her with a Stat ring so that her defensive buffs can't get removed. Anyways:

Here's how you beat the boss: he's vulnerable to blind and debuffs. As soon as the battle starts, have Aja reduce both his attack and magic attack. Have Goldi fully buff the party with Omni Raise, and use Halla's Neutralize super ability to make the whole party immune to status ailments.

Keep hitting him with the debuffs from Aja, blind him as well and reduce his agility with debuffs. He'll buff himself at various times but you can counteract that by just debuffing him again and again. You'll need to do this regardless actually because the debuffs don't last long, but with Aja's Flash Katana you'll be able to keep the boss's attack and magic attack fully debuffed.

With that, and blind, and party defensive buffs, he'll barely be able to do damage. Frequently he actually did zero damage with his attacks. The only problem is this meant raising SP was annoying, and Goldi couldn't reach 100 before Omni Raise would wear off. So I had to have her use her normal defense and magic defense buff spells. Fortunately, as with the boss blind and its attack and magic attack fully debuffed, I survived the transition.

Damage on the boss basically just came from Moxia. I had her use a fully powered Spirit Blade close to the start, then hit the boss over and over again with Magic Blade, slowly raising SP back to 100, then hit the boss with a second fully powered Spirit Blade, which killed it. So this is a bit of a tedious fight.

Also a very easy one, at least with a lvl 50 Aja. The fight went from nearly impossible to trivial. It's actually incredibly frustrating (as I'm sure I don't need to tell you.) There's no way to know that the boss would be vulnerable to blind and stat debuffs (or more specifically debuffs that reduce it's two attack stats), and so no way to know to take Aja into the fight (and you can't even save right before to experiment.)

Stage 4 is a one on one between Moxia and what's his name. Moxia is restored to full health and SP and magic before the fight, so just using Spirit Blade one shots the boss. At least as long as you have the Omega Sword (it sounds like in the first version of this, if you didn't have the Omega Sword Moxia wouldn't do enough damage to one shot him, and the fight would be basically unwinnable. Joy.)



Anyways, that's how I did it. I'll probably clean it up some and post it to the main comments in case others are having trouble.

EDIT: I just realized now that I never actually checked to see whether Aja's instant kill would work on him. I assume it probably doesn't, but considering how weirdly balanced this game is it wouldn't surprise me THAT much if it actually did.
Oddly enough before I even read your strategy suggestions I had already deduced most of it on my own. About the only notable difference between our approaches is that I utilized Ailment Guards rather then Halla's neutralize as well as used Hyper Move on Aja in order to gain an additional third action for her.

Sadly, I got to learn the hard way about how to beat Stage 4 of the boss fight. The first time I got up to him I tried to power up with Spirit Charge and was instantly killed for it.
Heh, I wondered whether I should use Spirit Charge on stage 4 or not. Glad I decided not to.

Also, congrats, it's finally over! :)
I suppose, but it doesn't change my opinion that final dungeon and boss fights are poorly designed.
Oh, I definitely agree with you. Even before the final dungeon, the maze obsession in the game was starting to get tiresome. The mazes started off fairly mild with the world map water maze(which even had a hint!) But they got progressively worse and worse, and the final dungeon was a horrific endless hellmaze. Which was made worse by the very high encounter rate.

And all but the early parts of the final dungeon have no loot, and you'll easily reach the level cap before it's over, so there's not even the most minuscule of nominal rewards as you explore the ENDLESS HELLMAZE. Just wander around tediously while escaping from every fight.

And then there's the final boss, which forces you to use every member of your party, when you may not have leveled them all up, or even have the proper gear for them all. And it forces all your members to fight in a very counter intuitive fashion, if you don't know how it works then your best group will face the relatively easy first stage, and the weaker leftover group will fight in the extremely hard second stage. So of course I wiped there my first time (would anyone not).

And then finally, the third stage, which requires you to have a very specific party makeup or else it's impossible, and which DOESN'T LET YOU SAVE BEFORE IT, so you can't even easily experiment to see what works, and... argggggg.

I'm preaching to the choir here of course, but it feels good to vent. I really wanted to like Spirit Blade. And there were parts that I really did like! But damn if there weren't parts that seemed like the game was purposely trying to make me hate it.
My final boss strategy:

Strange I usually use Moxia(Stat Ring), Terra, Halla, and Spirette on part 1. Terra's debuffs are nice. Halla's Holy Nuke and Spirette's Ice Nuke do a lot of damage and of course a full powered Spirit Blade. The thing should die pretty quickly.

That leaves Moxia, Goldi(Omni Ring), Aja(Stat Ring), and Miti(Stat Ring) for part 2. This does take a while. Moxia should use Magic Blade to build up her SP for part 3. Goldi should use Omni Raise and then work on building up her SP for part 3. Aja with the Hyper Katana is the healer with double Mega Potions and she can debuff Vinal's MAT. Miti's Buster Hug only costs 25 SP and can debuff Vinal's MAT as well and for a longer length of time.

Part 3:
Moxia (Stat Ring), Goldi (Omni Ring), Halla (Stat Ring), Miti (Stat Ring)
Moxia will hack away with Spirit Blade and Magic Blade. Goldi uses Omni Raise ASAP. Halla heals (if she has a free moment and enough SP Magic Mirror can really do A LOT of damage to the boss). Miti uses Buster Hug as much as possible.


I'll change the saving rule for part 3 for Version 3.

Why the final boss is the way it is:
My main experience with RPGs has been the Final Fantasy series. In some of them you get extra party members who CAN join in on the final fight, but they probably won't. I wanted to have a way for every character in your party to definitely be in the final fight. I also wanted a fight that was challenging at the highest level without RNG and forced more out of the player than just heal + attack.

This is the first RPG I've ever made (Not counting my FF1 hack that I haven't released. That is meaner than this game in general.)

The encounter rate is the default for RPG Maker VX Ace.
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